The lights of trucks carrying migrants to Libya dot the desert horizon in northern Niger. Over 100 trucks leave the town of Agadez every Monday evening, each pickup carrying 20-25 migrants all with hopes of reaching Europe.

A young boy rests against the stick used to keep him from falling from the back of the pickup as it tears across the Sahara. Any passenger who falls unseen at night will almost certainly die, not due to the fall but because of the desert's relentless heat the following day.

Trucks carrying migrants pass back into the desert as vendors push their carts back to wait for more trucks at a small desert outpost a few hours north of Agadez. Smugglers time their departure into the desert to within a few hours, forming a loose caravan in the hopes that it will provide some shred of security against the increasingly lawless Sahara.